Judge orders Dallas County to extend polling hours for Texas Democratic primary amid voter confusion

A Dallas County judge ordered Democratic polling sites to stay open for an additional two hours for the Texas primary Tuesday night amid confusion from voters over where they could cast their ballots.

Texas Democrats said thousands of voters in Dallas and Williamson counties showed up at the wrong polling site. Democratic voters in Dallas County, the second-largest county by population in the state, will now be able to cast ballots until 9 p.m. local time.

While voters in the two counties could cast ballots at any countywide voting locations during the early voting period and in previous elections, casting ballots on Election Day in this year’s primary is limited to party-specific precinct polling sites, confusing many people about where they were supposed to go. Some voters were turned away, while others are casting provisional ballots, Texas Democratic Party Executive Director Terri Burke said.

“Around one-third of the voters are having problems,” Burke said in a phone interview, adding that she believed redistricting and the move to precinct-based voting in the counties contributed to the confusion.

Political parties, not local governments, oversee Election Day voting for Texas primaries. Democrats and Republicans in the state often administer elections jointly and outsource the operations to county election officials, who have opted in recent years to have countywide voting centers that allow voters to cast ballots wherever is most convenient for them.

But two counties, Dallas and Williamson, which is just north of Austin, chose to run their primaries separately and at the precinct level, a move that forced Democrats to do the same.

In Dallas County, propelled by election conspiracy theories about the security of ballot-counting machines, Republicans made the change in hope of hand-counting their ballots. Dallas Republicans ultimately abandoned their plans to count ballots by hand because of the high costs, but the precinct-level voting plans went forward.

Phone calls to the Dallas County Elections Department led to an automated phone message noting that voting is precinct-based on Election Day and that voters must cast ballots at their assigned polling sites. The message also offered an option to find your “Election Day Vote Centers,” which might confuse voters.

Voters who don’t appear on the precinct’s list of registered voters can cast provisional ballots, but if they’re not at their assigned polling sites, they won’t be counted.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who represents a Dallas-based congressional district and is running for the Democratic Senate nomination, blasted Republicans over the confusion.

“Both Dallas and Williamson county voters have grown accustomed to countywide voting, including on Election Day,” her campaign said in a statement. “This effort to suppress the vote, to confuse and inconvenience voters is having its intended effect as people are being turned away from the polls. We are monitoring the situation and working with our local county party to explore all solutions, including an extension of Election Day voting hours.”

The campaign of Crockett’s main opponent in the primary, state Rep. James Talarico, said in a statement: “We are deeply concerned about the reports of voters being turned away from the polls.”